Interview with Jarek Szymanski – Part 2

PART 2

Jarek: Actually there were a lot of twists and turns in me getting to China, there were at least two occasions which could have derailed my plans to study in China entirely. The first was in the summer of 1988, when I handed the completed Sinology application documents to my girlfriend, asking her to submit them for me. Thinking that with Chinese and kungfu she would never get to see me, when I returned after my summer internship I found that she hadn’t submitted them! Fortunately it turned out that so few people had applied to the Sinology program that they still accepted me, on the condition that I would make up the necessary entrance exams later, when the professor responsible for enrolment came back. Luckily for me, it was a full year before that particular professor returned, by which time they had forgotten all about me missing the entrance exams.

The second occasion was in the summer of 1990. To give a bit of background, at that time Poland still had compulsory military service for all young men, which meant that you had to be sent off to a remote training camp in the North-east of Poland for a year. At almost the exact same time I received notice that my application for a scholarship to study in Beijing had been accepted, I received a notification to report for military service in a couple of weeks’ time. Seeing the opportunity to study in China evaporate before my eyes, I went to the local army recruitment office in Poznan with a letter from my university explaining my predicament. To my huge relief, I was informed that there had been a change in the regulations the week before and that I no longer qualified for military service!

And so, it was in high spirits that I boarded the plane from Warsaw to Beijing in early September 1990. I still remember arriving in Beijing as clearly as if it were yesterday. September of that year was unusually hot, so when the doors of the plane opened we were hit by a blast of almost tropical heat, accompanied by the deafening ‘wheeew-wheeew’ shrilling of cicadas typical of a Beijing summer. Beijing at that time was still very undeveloped, which is hard to imagine given the glass and concrete mega-city it has become. Some details of my impressions on landing may help: once the plane landed, a man on a bicycle appeared and it seemed as if the plane was following him to the final destination. When I looked out the window as the plane was taxiing, I saw a group of people on bicycles and tricycles, with one person even in a mule-drawn cart – and almost everyone was wearing dark green Mao-jackets. Once the plane had reached the terminal, the wheeled ramp stairs for disembarking the aircraft where wheeled over by a guy on a three-wheeled trishaw, and the road from Beijing airport to downtown was still a 2-lane asphalted blacktop (editor’s note: it is now a 10-lane highway).

Beijing Airport Road – Then

Beijing Airport Expressway as it looks now

I and another Polish student were picked up at the airport and driven to Beijing Language Institute (BLI, now Beijing Language & Culture University, BLCU) in Haidian district. The dormitory I was shown to was very basic and dirty with footprints all over the walls – however, I was later to find out that actually the dormitory the foreign students stayed in was newly built and much nicer compared to the ones in which the Chinese students stayed. Conditions were very spartan, with hot water only 3 hours in the evenings and with central heating only turned on during the day. Given that winter nights in Beijing can drop to -10C or even -20C, as you can imagine the dormitory rooms were very cold at night.  I was lucky to stay in the room facing south – warmer in winter due to more sunlight and not exposed to harsh northern winds. The only night we didn’t have hot water was Thursday nights – which we later found out was because it was the Chinese students’ turn to use the hot water on those nights (i.e. they only had hot water once a week!).

The foreign students at BLI came from all over the world – in my dorm alone there were students from Russia, Nepal, Germany, Bangladesh, Japan etc. In the first year, I roomed with a very thoughtful Philosophy student from the Netherlands with whom I had many interesting discussions.  In the mornings I was woken by the sound of bells and prayers coming from the room where students from Nepal lived, while in the evenings I would go to sleep accompanied by the sound of Bolivian music emanating from the rooms of the South American students, who would party every evening!

As one of my main motivations for coming to China was the learn CMA, I immediately set about looking around for teachers. Some of the PE teachers on the BLI campus knew and taught various martial arts. I remember there was one teacher who taught the standardised 24 taiji routine, one Wu style taiji teacher and a teacher of Liang style baguazhang surnamed Xin, who was a grandstudent of the famous Li Ziming. I decided to start learning bagua from Xin Litian laoshi (信立天), who immediately set us to work learning circle walking, the eight basic palm changes, and later on the 64 hands set, as well as applications.

I still remember that we paid Xin laoshi 5 yuan per hour for the classes, which was a princely sum in 1990, as a teacher’s monthly salary was only around 140 yuan. At the same time, I continued looking in the parks for other teachers, as at that time I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be able to stay in China and I wanted to learn as much as possible. A friend of mine was learning Chuojiao Fanzi under a famous Beijing teacher (Hong Zhitian), but I was put off from studying it due to the number of forms in the system – having a strong foundation in Praying Mantis, my goal was to seek out a ‘simpler’ system with a stronger focus on jibengong and single techniques.

Shortly afterwards, a friend and I took a trip to visit Hengshan in Shanxi province (恒山, not to be confused with the other Hengshan 衡山 in Hunan province), which at the time was technically not open to foreigners.

Hengshan in Shanxi province

On the trip, through a stroke of good luck we ended up meeting three Chinese journalists, one of whom introduced me to a Qigong teacher in Beijing and also a Xingyi teacher called Guo Maosheng (郭茂盛), who I later found out was a grand-student of the famous Shang Yunxiang. Through a recommendation of a friend I also started studying Chen style taijiquan with a teacher named Liu Wunian, whose taiji came from Chen Zhaokui.

Jarek’s Chen style taiji teacher Liu Wunian correcting a student’s broadsword routine

So already in my first year in Beijing I was studying the 3 main internal arts, qigong and also some Yiquan with a friend. I trained 3 times a day (early morning, lunchtime and early evening), and was probably averaging at least 4-5 hours of training each day. It may seem strange to other people but that was one of the most enjoyable times of my life, to have so much free time to dedicate to learning all this strange new material.